Saving Time is Like Saving Money

Time is money, or so goes the cliche. There's merit to that well-known phrase and many others. A person can't buy time, another cliche, so why not save it as the greatest resource? After all, if you worry about the business at hand, in due time you'll have time to waste. Save your time by avoiding frivolous items (like cliches) that work so hard to steal away our precious time with little rewards for the time spent.

Face It: Facebook Wastes Time

Yes, it keeps you in contact with old friends and it's a lot of fun, but many people spend hours scrolling through their Facebook pages each day. Couldn't those hours be spent in face to face contact with someone? How productive were those hours?

Measure your actions in value. Rest and quiet time have great value; they reboot your system and keep you mentally and physically healthy. Time spent learning a new skill is beneficial, so is time spent working to create something. Time with friends is important too, if it measures up. Does two hours a day updating Facebook really pay off with two hours of reward? When you get off the page do you feel the same surge that you feel after two hours sitting with a friend? After two hours spent gardening? Make sure it measures up.

Twitterpated

Bambi and his friends found themselves twitterpated in spring when the girls batted cartoon eyelashes their way. However, today's twitterpated society isn't the same. Is it really crucial that you tweet your every move? Add up the minutes a day spent on this task and you might be shocked. Figure on five tweets a day at five minutes each (tweeting and reading other tweets) equaling 25 minutes a day. By the end of a year you'll have spent 152 hours, roughly 19 nights' sleep tweeting. We didn't tweet or blog ten years ago, and we did just fine.

Stay Away from Black Holes

Some websites are black holes. They eat up our time and suck us in. Whether it's a celebrity gossip website or endlessly linked pages of Wikipedia, if you find yourself involved in a website long enough to "lose" an hour or two, don't bookmark it. It's a black hole.

Like any addiction, stay away from those places that pull your time away from you. When you feel the urge to jump on them, have a backup plan like a magazine or a chore to do instead. Break the habit while you can.

Prepare to Debark

Have you ever lost an evening because after the television program you were watching ended the next show pulled you in with its first five minutes? The programmers know this, and they'll catch you with the crime dramas on television. Counter it.

When your television program has a few moments left, have the remote in hand and turn it off immediately before you get pulled in.

Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, and it wasn't built with only a dollar. The times, they are a changin' and more distractions and time wasting activities pop up every day. Live by the adage "another day, another dollar" and make the most of your time.